Legal experts destroy Republican argument that Democrats deployed a fake electors plot 60 years ago

One of the excuses Republicans have been spinning about the fake electors' plot in states like Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, is that they were simply copying a tactic used by Hawaii during the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. According to legal experts, however, it doesn't hold up, USA Today explained Sunday.

In the case of Hawaii, the election was 150 votes apart, with Nixon ahead. As those who recall Florida in 2000, elections that close in most states trigger an automatic recount, not to mention lawsuits. In the case of Donald Trump in 2020, those lawsuits had already unfolded and they lost them.

“In Trump's case there were no genuine grounds for uncertainty about the outcome of the election, no ongoing recount, and Trump's slates of fake electors were assembled with the intent to sow confusion, buffalo Congress and the Vice President, and stop them from certifying the genuine election results,” Stanford Law School Professor David Alan Sklansky told USA Today.

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It made sense in the Hawaii case to have electors prepared since it wasn't clear who the actual electors were. In 2020, it was known. The elections were finalized. The counts were over. The lawsuits had concluded or were dismissed. Trump lost.

“The 1960 Hawaii dispute had no chance of overturning the overall election result and was not part of a general scheme to rig or steal the election,” George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin.

At the same time, there were no states where the election was so close that it was just 150 votes apart. In Georgia, for example, there were nearly 12,000 more votes for Biden.

Even after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that the vote counting was over and Trump lost, the fake electors still met, fraudulently signed the letter, and sent it to Washington arguing it should be counted.

Joan Meyer, a partner at the law firm Thompson Hine, also explained that in the 1960 case, the court was still overseeing the recount process, and it did result in flipping the state. In Trump's case, there was no court-monitored recount and the election was already finalized and called.

In Hawaii, the electors of both sides met publicly and with the understanding that one side would not be used after the recount. Trump's Georgia people met secretly and were specifically told not to talk about what they were doing.

“This surreptitious behavior indicates that this was not an honest disagreement or a backup plan to keep options open, it was a plot to substitute legitimate electors with fake ones,” Meyer said.

Meyer also explained that the election certifications in 1960 were “intended to be a backstop, utilized after a court-ordered recount declaring the real victor of the presidential election."

In 2020, however, the fake electors weren't involved in any lawsuits nor were they being observed by the courts. Another thing happened for Hawaii in 1960, their Republican governor sent the new certificate to Congress, USA Today cited. Georgia had no support from their governor or the secretary of state.

“It is hard to convince a jury that there was fraudulent intent by the Democrat electors when it turned out that Kennedy had won and they substituted a correct certificate approved by the Governor of Hawaii,” former prosecutor Marc Scholl told USA Today.

Read the full explainer from USA Today here.